Friday, April 27, 2012

A Lack of Faith in the Self

Honestly
and Truth aren’t always intellectual pursuits. Most of the time, they’re a
feeling. As though it confirms and at the same time gels fragments of memories
or thoughts into a single coherent idea.
Evidence of their truth has been dripped to you all life long yet specifics are
impossible to vocalize.

Such is
my belief that negative emotions are more honest emotions. If all people have
various selves, which they interchange rapidly as the need or desire arises, then
anger and its ilk are the ones closer to the “true” self. Because an angry
outburst doesn’t represent a quick fabrication of lies, but the release of
feelings long stewing. Because happiness is a response to stimuli. So is anger.
But happiness feels like an involuntary reaction. Like laughing. But then, have
you ever shown the funniest comedian’s best work to a friend that doesn’t
laugh? Laughing isn’t a voluntary
response! It is something that happens to you. Or so I thought. Anger is a
thought process that arrives at an unbalanced equation. Fairness is not being
represented! Yet I trust it more because it feels as though I am thinking.
Nefarious. On the nature of and what constitutes thought, I turn to feelings as
the sole judge.

Another
thing I firmly believe is that whenever anyone makes a general claim about how
the populations psyche works, they are invariably talking about themselves. It’s
another trick that emotion plays upon the mind.

Adversity
doesn’t reveal character but creates a situation in which only an honest self
can live. It can feel as though layers were being peeled back. Too long living
in comfort builds a maze of other and alternate selves while the core isn’t
needed so is lost. It’s a laziness I can’t explain. The very best and most
capable self is the first jettisoned. The ease with which fantasies are slipped
into is inversely proportional to the difficulty in maintaining a thinking
mind. Yet who is the one managing these multitudes? Is there a core more core
than the thought-to-be core? Honestly another tool on another layer to deal
with difficulty? I immensely distrust anyone who has the least confidence in
who they are. Anyone who can describe themselves with authority. I think they’ve
taken the candy shell for the sum total. Fooled by some malicious or lazy self
that wishes to be.

A
discussion of selves and the mind is filled with statements balanced with “and”s
and “or”s. A trick of language (and by extension culture), or a fair
representation of the brutal dichotomy? The Good and Bad self. Thinking verses
Feeling. Yet I keep coming back to the question: who has taken the step back to
analyze both?

The
Truth is a reduction of all superfluous material into a single core observation.
How can I send a corrupted (superfluous) self to investigate it? And why are
all metaphysical activities only understood by this animal brain’s need for
physical metaphor (the truth is at the center), from which metaphysics is
supposed to be… above, beyond?